Grasshoppers In My Pillow
by whatthefoucault
Summary: Wilson, a breakup, the blues, a snootful of tequila, a spot of melancholy. Technically precedes "All You Need is Lunch," though the two can be read independently of one another without incident. Not slashy, not quite preslashy, but possibly subtextual.
1. Grasshoppers In My Pillow

**A/N:** Apropos of my previously published story, sure I could have just handwaved it as being set sometime after the fellas presumably part ways with the ladies they end up with by the end of season 6 (as I sincerely hope they do), but far be it from the little voice inside my head to leave well enough alone, and my mental sense of continuity demanded some sort of prequel-esque follow-up to tie up one of the loose ends. Thus, I wrote this while on front desk at the office today. Possibly asks more questions than it answers. Whoops. Nevertheless:

Granted, he thought, you'll never know if an experiment will succeed or fail if you don't try. So they did try, and failed. Actually, they'd tried once before - and failed then too - but that was a long time ago. If at first you don't succeed, give up?

Maybe. Neither of them could identify exactly why it hadn't worked, only that it hadn't. Unless she had some idea she had not shared, he wondered. But there was no use speculating. From the window, he could see the car speeding off, receding into the distance. The goodbye was easy enough: no anger, no vitriol, no smashing of cherished objects, thank God. No great sadness either, no tears, nor desperation: there had been no attempts to work it out, no pleas for change, just quiet resignation, and acceptance.

When she had returned to retrieve the last of her things, she turned once to look at him as she made for the door. He leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching her go.

"Bye James," she said with a sad smile.

"Bye, Sam," he replied.

Stripped of nearly half its contents, the loft seemed now more spartan than ever, empty and spare. If these walls could talk, he thought, right now, they'd be downright laconic. The quiet left his mind with too much space to wander round, to think on how much of an idiot he felt, how he likely could have predicted that this would fail, if he had allowed himself to see it. Too much thinking. He needed music. Something.

He walked over to the stereo and quickly flipped through his collection; there was a dusty sleeve he didn't recognize hidden behind the others. A 78 of some old blues song, long forgotten. Not his, and certainly not hers; rather, he surmised, it was left behind by an old friend. A parting gift, or a parting shot, who knows. The crackling of the turntable was warm and comforting, familiar.

He settled down on the sofa with a glass of tequila. He felt a surge of heat course through him as he downed the corrosive liquid. It felt good to feel something. It wasn't even good tequila.

When the song ended, he rose from his seat and placed the needle back at the beginning. Another turn, another tequila. He soon lost count of how many times he repeated this procedure.

He could not say as to how long this went on, only that, at some point, the sun had gone down, and at some other point, he started to notice the telephone.

He stared at it. The telephone stared back. Sometime in the midst of this staring contest, he noticed that the song had ended again, leaving in its wake a comforting chorus of static. He rose, prepared to begin again. His head spun as he stood. Or perhaps the room spun. Perhaps both. He gingerly placed the needle back at the beginning.

One more turn, he thought.

He sat – slumped, rather – back down in his seat. He stared at the telephone. The telephone stared back. It beckoned him.

Don't call, he told himself. This was stupid. It wasn't like he had any idea what he would say even if he did call, and by no means was he far enough gone as to breathe into the receiver until he was hung up on. No, he should call, he finally resolved. The words would come.

He had no idea whether it was too late to call; for all he knew, it was the middle of the night, or the wee hours of the morning. Not that it had ever mattered before. He picked up the receiver.

The number was so engraved into his memory, the dialing sequence so automatic, that even his somewhat encumbered motor skills could not stop him in time to rethink his decision. He waited. His pulse had quickened to the point that if he did not know better, he might suspect that someone had dosed his drink with amphetamines. Again.

Click.

"Hello?" said the tired voice on the other end of the line.

"House, it's me," he said, his voice breathless, almost a whisper. "I've made a huge mistake."


	2. Couches Are My Real Home

**Disclaimer**: I may own a lot of things: a coffee press, the Mighty Boosh special edition DVD, a cane named Zoltan, and a fridge full of yogurt, I still don't own the show or its spiffy characters.

**Author's Note**: Follows – or rather runs concurrently to - "Grasshoppers in my Pillow".

He absent-mindedly shoveled corn chips into his mouth until he felt his body slipping into its daily torpor. No sense switching off the television; he had whatever softcore porn was playing on mute anyway. He could ignore the pictures. No sense shuffling all the way to the bedroom, either. The couch would do. It always did, on nights like these. He let the chip bag slip from his lap onto the floor, next to a good week's worth of empty beer bottles and last night's takeout boxes.

It wasn't that he was devastated by the breakup, per se: he'd just run out of things to care about. Wilson was busy with Sam, and Cuddy his quite quickly realized that the fact that she did not _want_ to love him overrode the fact that she _did_ love him, so she decided not to. Priorities, or something. Might have also had something to do with the fact that she was still his boss and he still had to do things at work that she was contractually obligated to get mad about, at least once a week.

And the fact that he deliberately kept his socks on when they were intimate, just to annoy her. He could remember the conversation that confirmed the dissolution of their association with great clarity, almost verbatim.

"_You are completely irresponsible, you know that?" Cuddy paced the bedroom floor, arms flailing._

"_Yes. Do you?" House sat on the edge of the bed, cereal bowl in hand, chomping on a spoonful of milk-sodden Cheerios. The plain ones, not the honey-nut kind. Cuddy didn't keep the honey-nut kind in the house. Probably has too many carbs, or something._

"_You have no respect for me at work, you stay up until all hours playing music while some of us actually have to get a good six hours of sleep in, and what's more, you made Rachel cry!" she exclaimed, hopping slightly as she attempted to put in an earring, whilst still pacing, with one shoe on._

"_It was an isolated incident," House shrugged, still in his pyjamas._

"_You microwaved her Wiggles DVD, House!" she stopped pacing and stared at him, wide-eyed with frustration. "You stormed across the room, declared 'I don't like this,' and nuked her favourite video into oblivion! These are not the actions of a responsible man!"_

"_It was for her own good. Have you seen that show? Probably stunted her intellectual development. It's like a bad acid flashback." House gesticulated authoritatively towards her with his spoon._

"_It's for babies!" Cuddy shouted, pulling on her other shoe. "God, I don't know what I was thinking." She buried her face in her hands now, shaking her head. She looked tired._

"_You were thinking you love me." House regarded her, for a moment, with total honesty. The momentary openness in his face gave her pause._

"_Yeah, I do... sort of. I just don't know if it's enough, you know? It doesn't override everything. And I hate that shirt," she sighed, letting her eyes fall to the floor, sadly._

"_It's classic," he said._

"_It's threadbare. Has it ever even seen an iron?" she gathered up her suitcase and her daughter in one deft, sweeping mommy-gesture, and made her way to the door, shaking her head. "Forget it. I've got to take Rachel to daycare before work. I'll see you around the hospital, I guess."_

"_I guess so."_

And that was how it ended. What a clusterfuck, he thought. Don't shit where you eat, and all that. A man can change, sure, but you can't expect to see a completely different person staring out from his face. If you do, you're a damn fool. They should have known better.

Just as he shrugged off the last vestiges of the day's consciousness, the air was pierced by the shrill tones of what he eventually surmised was a Lady Gaga song. The one with the disco stick, whatever that meant. His phone. Wilson. Somehow, setting that song as Wilson's telephone theme tune had seemed appropriate.

He fumbled around for a few moments in search of the source of the tinny ruckus that indicated an incoming call. He caught a glimpse of the cold blue glow of the phonescreen and flipped it open. He slowly held it up to his ear, almost suspiciously.

"Hello?" he said, in a tired voice.

"House, it's me," was the reply. "I've made a huge mistake."

"What happened, Wilson?" House snapped back into awareness, tense with sudden concern.

"She's gone," Wilson slurred. "Sam's gone. Left today. Just me now. Hey, House. You know, this record of yours is really good."

"I'm coming over," said House.

He shoved whatever was at hand (which amounted to a travel-size bottle of ibuprofen, two unwashed t-shirts, a Rubik's cube, a warm can of diet Redbull, and an outdated issue of Hello! magazine) into his backpack, pulled his jacket on over his pyjamas, and made, as fast as he could, for the loft. He would stay with Wilson, at least for the night, if not move back in altogether. There would be no need for pretense, for either of them making roundabout excuses for why they should become roommates again. Wilson needed him there. House was more than happy to oblige.

And there he was, dazed and half-conscious, slumped on the floor, barely propped up by the couch. The room was filled with the repeating, crackling drone of a turntable that had long since finished its song, and now paced in circles, waiting patiently for its owner to return the needle to its home. Wilson lazily turned his head toward House.

"House," he said. His eyes spoke of tired sadness, and defeat. Possibly relief as well, though House could not be certain.

"Hey," said House, allowing his bag to fall to the floor. As unobtrusively as he could, House quickly sized him up for warnings. The idiot hadn't given himself alcohol poisoning, at least, nor had he taken anything else; he would most definitely feel like a sack of shit in the morning, however, thought House.

"I didn't wake you up, did I?" Wilson looked concerned.

"Nah," replied House, easing himself down onto the floor beside Wilson. Wilson swayed slightly to one side, off-balance and exhausted.

"Didn't interrupt anything, did I?" asked Wilson, with even greater concern.

"Jerking off. But I forgive you."

Wilson flinched. "Jesus, House. Thank you for that visual."

House smiled at his friend. "You're welcome."


End file.
